


Child's Logic

by alex_kade



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall - Fandom, Spectre - Fandom
Genre: Alec fumbles through, Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, James is an awesome child guardian, Kid!Fic, OC 003 and 002 characters, Q is being smart and Alec is being a smartass, Q is seven, agents are too hard on themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_kade/pseuds/alex_kade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>003 nearly died trying to save Q, but the blame for Q's kidnapping still falls on his shoulders. Now little-Q is on a mission to make him and everyone else realize that it wasn't his fault. </p>
<p>Or, the one where little-Q makes a lot more sense than his adult counterparts and isn't afraid to show it.</p>
<p>(A sequel to Only_1_Truth's fic titled "Attack-Dogs Make Great Babysitters")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child's Logic

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Attack-Dogs Make Great Babysitters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/710074) by [Only_1_Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth). 



> I wanted to say a special thanks to [Only_1_Truth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth) for allowing me to play in her sandbox! I loved her version of tiny Q, and the original characters she created for R, 003, and 002 were so freakin' fun that I couldn't help but want to play with them (particularly 003). 
> 
> If you haven't read [Attack-Dogs Make Great Babysitters](http://archiveofourown.org/works/710074/chapters/1312445), this little ficlet is probably not going to make much sense at all, so I highly recommend you bounce over to Truth's page and read that one first.

It was a somewhat lazy night at MI6, meaning several of the staff were permitted to go home early, leaving only the skeleton crew on shift. Q sat patiently at his designated perch within Q-branch, his own spot having been carved out for him in the weeks since he'd finally, permanently, been freed from the terrors of his past. He was still a little jumpy, still suffered nightmares some nights, but overall, he'd been recovering well. He'd begun to learn to ask for things that he wanted, had finally grasped the idea that it was okay to crawl into Bond's bed when he was afraid without fear of being reprimanded, and had even managed to make a modicum of peace with old-Q, who finally seemed to accept the fact that one day it was very probable that little-Q was going to be taking over his position upon his retirement. It was easier to just roll with it and start Q's official training now than it was to fight it and constantly be the enemy in everybody's eyes only to be replaced by the boy in the end, anyway. Besides, Q did make a rather exceptional helper on the few missions that old-Q let him sit in on.

Tonight, though, absolutely nothing was going on that required anybody's immediate attention. R had even left for the evening already, leaving the blissfully quiet branch in the capable hands of her minions. She may not have bounced quite as early if she'd known Q was going to be there, but it was an impromptu visit on Alec's part who had gotten wind that a new, shiny, fire-producing piece of tech was being made that had his name on it and he needed to come check it out immediately.

Well, it had _004's_ name on it, actually, who was decidedly more responsible with such things than Alec was, but that wasn't going to stop the known pyro from trying to stake his claims first. With Bond out on a fairly low-key mission at the moment (his first since rescuing Q, which he adamantly refused to take until Q had assured him at least a dozen times that he'd be fine staying home with Alec), that left Alec with little choice but to bring him along. Not that Q minded. He rather enjoyed spending time in Q-branch, even if there weren't too many minions to hang with at the moment. Being surrounded by computers was simply relaxing for him, especially when he wasn't required to be on them for anything nefarious.

Curious to see if Alec was getting himself into trouble, Q glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention before deftly sliding into MI6's security feeds, idly flipping through the cameras  in search of his missing guardian. Before he located him, however, something else caught his eye – or, rather, some _one_ else. Creeping out of his room in the silence of the night was none other than 003, rolling himself along in the wheelchair he was still confined to, Glock following obediently beside him. Really, 003 wasn't supposed to be roaming around on his own at all, and Q could tell even through the small video feed on his screen that moving under his own power was at least a little painful to the agent. The slight winces as he pushed the wheels were something that most people would not have been privy to, but with 003 being unaware that keen eyes were watching him, he didn't think to have his shields up at the moment. Despite that, however, he did keep his jaw set in a familiar line of determination as he turned himself into the physical therapy room, a large medical gym that did (thankfully) have its own security camera, unlike the actual patient rooms that couldn't have them for reasons of privacy.

Q watched with an unusual blend of sadness, guilt, alarm and a touch of pride as 003 wheeled himself over to the parallel bars and firmly set the brakes on the chair so it wouldn't slide back on him when he pushed himself to his feet. Glock strolled around to the side of the mat beneath the bars and simply laid down as if this were all just another routine activity, and Q realized with widening eyes that it probably was whenever 003 could find a chance to slip out of his room like this. In fact, he'd probably been doing it for at least the past three days while 002 had been out on a mission of his own, leaving 003 with really no one to watch over him (and, Q belatedly thought, no one to keep him company) while he was in the agonizingly slow process of healing from multiple near-fatal gunshot wounds. Well, R probably went to go see him when she could, but her visits couldn't have been very long considering how busy her duties in Q-branch generally kept her. It was just a good thing 003 had his dog there with him, otherwise the man would've _really_ been lonely, a dangerous thing for an agent to be when stranded in Medical.

With hard metal that seemed to be born into double-oh agent blood, 003 gripped the ends of the parallel bars and hauled himself to his feet, his face seeming to pale slightly even through the security feed as he stood there for a moment, riding out the initial pain and pull on muscles that were still healing and others that had been weakened somewhat from lack of use. It didn't last long, however, before he was walking back and forth down the length of the bars, trying to do so while putting as much weight on his legs and as little on his arms as possible. It seemed like the distribution was about fifty-fifty to Q from his vantage point, though, with neither arms nor legs being better over the other, considering the injuries he'd sustained were pretty much everywhere. If he put too much weight on his upper body, his elbows would begin to buckle; too much on his legs and his knees would start to go. Still, he made a slow but thoroughly-precise three full laps, and was halfway through the fourth when he misstepped as he was turning himself around. His hand didn't move fast enough to balance himself back out on the bar, and down he went in a painful heap, curling in on himself on the mat with his face pressed firmly into it, further muffling what looked to be a frustrated scream. He unfolded one arm from out beneath him and used it to pound his fist several times against the floor while the other arm remained pinned against his torso as if it could magically make everything that was hurt and broken on the inside magically disappear. He was a crumpled mass of anger and pain, but when Glock crawled over to nudge his muzzle beneath 003's arm, he slowly unraveled into nothing more than a slack puddle of pure defeat. He wasn't crying, not that Q could see, anyway, but all the fight and gusto from just moments before seemed to drain completely out of him as he simply lay there hugging his furry best friend, his cobalt eyes looking nothing more than just _tired_ as he stared off into nothing.

A large hand suddenly slipped into view at Q's side, startling the boy as it touched the mouse to close the window on his computer. The terrifyingly familiar fear of being punished for touching things he wasn't supposed to ripped through him with the ease of razor wire tearing through hot flesh, but this time he was able to tamper it down some as he forced his mind to recognize that the person beside him was no one to be feared. It was only Alec, someone safe, but still someone who had caught him snooping where he wasn't supposed to.

"I didn't mean to," he said quickly, quietly, and a bit defensively. "I was looking for you and..."

The same hand that had worked the mouse with silent efficiency came up to land on top of Q's head, just a light touch that Bond often used to reassure the boy, one that Alec had picked up on over the weeks. It was comforting, but always a little odd coming from who Q considered to be the obnoxious clown of the whole MI6 bunch. Whenever Alec was using a soft voice and a gentle touch, it meant he was typically reflecting on something internally, and that something was usually dancing around the subject of melancholy.

"Don't tell anyone you saw that, okay?" he requested in still-quiet tones. "Least of all, him. Anyone sees an agent as being weak, we feel twice as strongly about proving ourselves otherwise."

Q shook his head as he turned back to the now-blank screen. "I thought he was being _strong_. He was trying really hard. I don't think there's anything weak about trying your hardest."

"To a normal person, no, but to someone like us? Trying your hardest and still failing is the difference between life and death, ours or somebody else's. Failure is a weakness that could lose us a helluva lot more than just our jobs, so it's not something we take lightly." His tone had been a bit distant as he'd made the comment, but as if suddenly realizing who he was talking to, he did something distinctly more Alec-like and ruffled up Q's mop of thick hair. "Come on, kitten, we better get out of here. It's late and I'm hungry."

Putting on the appropriate annoyed pout, the boy attempted to smooth his hair back in place and shot his adult roomie one of his token glares at being called kitten. Again. "You're always hungry."

Alec chuckled at that. "Take that as a good thing. It means I cook more, and I'm a far better cook than James, so be grateful."

"I can't argue with that," Q blurted out, then realized what he'd said a second too late as Alec barked out a laugh. "Don't tell him I said that!"

Alec, the bastard, kept laughing. He was absolutely going to tell Bond. Probably in a text that very night. Oh well, Q sighed, James would probably just turn it around on Alec and make him cook even _more_ , which was honestly fine with Q. Annoying as the man could be, he really was an excellent chef.

~~~~~~~~~

Q dreamt that night, more dark visions of what was and what could've have been, but this time they weren't about his time spent chained to a table or locked in a dog crate on a tiny plane. They weren't about Bond getting gunned down in the process of trying to rescue him, or about Alec getting burned alive in all that fire. No, this time the dreams brought him back to a losing battle in an apartment building, one in which the enemy was well-prepared (but still very nearly weren't) to take on one of Britain's deadliest assassins. He remembered seeing 003 being propped up in the doorway, blood covering his entire body, then being dropped to the floor like so much dead weight. He wasn't dead, but Q hadn't known that at the time, hadn't known that Glock had survived his bullet, as well, had no reason to believe otherwise when Westford informed him with cold, uncaring efficiency that the agent and canine who had fought so desperately to keep Q safe had failed and had paid for it with their lives.

_Failure is a weakness that could lose us a helluva lot more than just our jobs, so it's not something we take lightly._

Q dreamt of being saved, just like he had been, but it didn't end with him scratching fingers beneath the chin of a happy wolf hybrid while his owner offered awkward apologies from an infirmary bed. It ended with a funeral for man and beloved dog, alike, sharing a single casket as it was lowered into the ground, Q sobbing guilty tears while everyone else looked on with dry faces and eyes filled with almost bored disdain.

_"That's what he gets for not being good enough,"_ the whispers came. _"This is what he gets for being so weak."_ Q tried to tell them he hadn't been weak. _"This is what happens when you fail."_

One by one, Q tugged on their hands, pulled at their sleeves, gripped at their trousers or the pleats of their skirts, but they wouldn't listen to him. They hadn't been there. They hadn't seen what 003 had faced, hadn't heard the ferocity with which the agent had fought to protect a kid that he didn't even really _like_ , had no idea just how badly the odds had been stacked against him and how impossible it would've been to win, not when caught so abruptly unawares like they had been. It had been a lost cause from the very start, and 003 had known that, but he hadn't just given up and handed Q over the moment things got difficult. No, he had fought that much harder, had done whatever he could to even out the odds in Q's favor, but it was too much. He'd _known_ it was too much, but he'd tried, anyway, tried for _Q._

And _nobody_ cared.

~~~~~~~~~

"Hey, wha-?" Alec muttered as a small body climbed up onto his bed, not cuddling up next to him, but poking his arm with a delicate finger only to sit back, cross-legged on the mattress until the man fully woke up. This was...odd. Q had been sleeping in Bond's bed since 007 had left for his mission, granting Alec back the use of his own, an arrangement that seemed to work well for both of them. Q tended to sleep better when surrounded by Bond's scent, and Alec was a little less inclined to come fully awake to the sounds of the boy's nighttime wandering when there was a door between himself and the soft-footed child. In all the time that the two had known each other, however, Q _never_ intentionally woke Alec from his slumber, never even got close to him if he could help it, and that had been while Alec was "sleeping" right in front of him on the couch. To come into his room and to climb up onto his bed...this was either going to be a touching (albeit awkward) milestone in the level of trust Q showed towards Alec, or the boy was angry about something that Alec had done.

"Are you awake?" Q asked calmly, and at Alec's confused nod, the boy pulled back his tiny fist and punched the agent in the arm.

"Ow! What the hell?" Alec started. Not that the strike really hurt. Not at all, in fact, but the anger behind it definitely stung. Really, he should've known that the latter of his thoughts was the reason behind Q's impromptu nightly visit, but thinking back, he couldn't for the life of him pin down what he'd done that would make the kid mad enough to hit him. It couldn't have been over telling Bond that Q thought Alec was the better cook, could it? Because that had already blown up spectacularly in Alec's face with Bond's pleased statement that, if that was the case, it meant James would never have to be on cooking duty again. Besides, Alec had done far worse to the kid (the collection of godawful t-shirts building up in his dresser drawers, for one), none of which merited physical violence (outside of initially startling him into getting his hand bit, but that wasn't Q's fault). The kid just wasn't one to lash out normally, not unless he was panicked and scared. He didn't look anything of the sort right now. He looked _pissed_.

"I didn't hurt you," Q deadpanned, knowing full well he hadn't really put anything into his strike.

"Bloody hell, you didn't," Alec grumped back anyway. "Doesn't exactly feel good to be woken up to someone being an arse to you for no reason."

The comment stung the boy in a way that Alec hadn't meant it to, forgetting momentarily who he'd been talking to. Q – Quinn – had probably been woken up plenty of times to exactly this, random violence in the night whenever someone needed him to do something for them. It was exactly why Q still couldn't sleep a full night through, why he woke up guarded and on edge for a second before his mind filtered everything into place and told him he was home, safe, surrounded by people who cared about him now. The fact that he had done exactly the same thing to one of those people who made him feel safe was clearly a traumatizing realization to the boy, whose eyes immediately swam with tearful apologies.

"Hey, hey," Alec soothed, sitting up and gesturing for Q to come forward. "It's alright, kiddo, it didn't hurt. Just surprised me a little, is all. Come here. I swear, it's alright."

Q hesitated, but scooted forward, anyway, and buried his face into Alec's ribcage like he usually did to Bond, offering him a hug as a sort of truce. It wasn't the iron grip that he usually graced James with, but a voluntary hug was still something he didn't offer up to Alec on any sort of regular basis. It was as foreign as the random punch had been, meaning something truly was bothering the boy, and it was making Alec a bit uncomfortable. Why did this sort of thing always have to happen when James wasn't around? He didn't _do_ family, not like this. James at least seemed to remember something of how all this was supposed to work. Alec, for all his memories served, was pretty much born a smiling crocodile. Teasing and entertaining and guard-dogging he could do just fine. Playing therapist to an emotionally-fragile child genius? Not so much.

"Now, you wanna tell me what this is all about?" he tried anyway, because he knew to do at least that much.

Q dropped his arms down in a sort of flustered huff, but remained where he was leaning against Alec's side. "I don't understand any of you," he sighed.

And this was pretty much where Alec's knowledge of dealing with children stopped. "You're going to have to be a little more clear than that, _katje._ I'm not as smart as you, remember?"

The kid seemed to turn into himself for a moment, not out of fear, just sort of gathering his thoughts. Almost absently, he brushed his tiny fingers up the thin scar that ran the length of Alec's arm, the one he'd received during his quest to shamelessly slaughter Westford and the majority of his men on Q's behalf. There were more under his nightshirt, Q remembered, more marks to remind the boy what those around him were willing to do, willing to endure, to keep him safe. What he didn't understand was how _they_ didn't understand how important that was, that they were all so willing to suffer these marks, these pains, for someone like him, someone that nobody really cared about until now.

"If..." he started hesitantly, trying to form words into something that Alec might understand. "If you hadn't killed Westford, do you think James would've been mad at you?"

Alec looked down at the way the child was still tracing his scar, trying to discern where this conversation was going and failing at it miserably. "Bloody right, he would've been. He'd have been furious. Me, too, for that matter."

"Would he have been as mad if you'd..." Q sucked in a breath as if afraid to even say his next few words out loud, but still, he pushed ahead. "...if you'd died trying to kill him?"

"I-" he what? What the hell was he supposed to say to that? With a shrug of his shoulders and lost as all hell, he answered as honestly as he could. "I don't know, probably. He'd be pissed that I went and got my idiot self killed, and both God and Satan, combined, wouldn't be able to keep Westford safe after that, I imagine. I don't know if you noticed, but I also fall under the category of 'Property of Bond.' He doesn't like his things being taken away from him."

Q furled his brow as he thought the explanation through, coming to a conclusion that he clearly wasn't fond of. "So...he'd be angry at you for not killing Westford if you lived, but if you died, he'd only be angry at Westford for killing you, and angry at you for dying, but not for not killing Westford."

Alec had to sort the comment through his own head for a second just to make sense of it before carefully replying, "Yesss. I think. If I followed that."

"If you'd died, he wouldn't be angry at you for failing to kill Westford," Q clarified with a crisp, succinct tone, albeit a highly displeased one. "So that translates to this: every time you go out on a mission, if you wish to hold the full respect of your peers, you are expected to either succeed, or die trying. Fail in one of those two things, and you lose their respect."

Well _that_ took a dark turn that Alec hadn't been expecting. Granted there was some truth to that statement, but as reckless as 00 agents tended to be, they really weren't as suicidal as all that. Most missions weren't actually worth dying for, and the ones that were still weren't really ever seen as direct kamikaze missions. "It's not that cut and dry, Q," Alec replied, using the child's name to show how serious he was taking this conversation. "We aren't _expected_ to die trying. Good agents are hard to come by, harder to train up properly to be useful in the field. Trust me, MI6 would rather we'd come back alive if they can help it. Why do you think M and everyone at Q-branch gets so up in arms whenever we do something stupid and dangerous? Believe it or not, we've been ordered to abort missions here and there if things get too dicey and the fate of the world isn't resting on our shoulders."

Q snorted at that. "As if you would listen if told to abort."

"Ha! You've got us there, kid, but it's not because we're aiming to get ourselves killed to save our pride or anything. It's just hard to back away when we've got a target in our sights. _Bloody_ hard."

_Like trying to pull sharks away from the scent of blood in the water_ , Q pictured.

"But sometimes logic wins out in the end," Alec continued. "Like Bond getting you off that island when he first found you instead of making sure the job was done with Westford. You became the priority, and he understood that."

It was an offhanded statement meant to appease Q, but instead it only made his thoughts run that much faster. And angrier, which was exactly opposite of what Alec was going for.

"Hypocrites," the child suddenly accused, pulling away from the agent's side to glare up at him. "Bond was supposed to kill Westford, and he _failed_ , at least by your definition."

"Well, he dropped a building on the man's head," Alec pointed out a little flippantly. "You can't blame him for assuming the job was done after that."

"He didn't assume," Q pointed out knowingly. "Double-ohs don't assume. It's a confirmed kill or it isn't, and 007 didn't confirm the kill."

"Of course not, not when he had a bloody child in his arms!" Alec argued again. And why was he getting into a heated argument with a seven-year-old again? And, wait, shouldn't this have been going the other way around? The kid practically worshipped the ground James walked on. Why was _Alec_ the one jumping to Bond's defense in this scenario?

But the kid was on a roll now, not to be stopped. "007 didn't confirm the kill, which left Westford free to come after me again, which put 003 in a horribly compromised position in which he very nearly died in the fallout of 007's failure, and yet he is the one everyone blames for me being taken again. He is alone and hurt and ashamed all because he _survived_ trying and failing to protect me in an impossible scenario, and yet 007 gets to walk around the hero for saving me. No one sees _him_ as weak for not confirming Westford's death. They say he made the right decision because I was there and it was more important to keep me safe than to go back to confirm the kill. All Gregory was trying to do was _keep me safe_ , same as 007, so what is it, exactly, that he did wrong to warrant the blame for my kidnapping except for the simple fact that he didn't die trying to save me?"

So. Many. Words. And all of them were akin to another punch, only this one straight to Alec's face. He didn’t speak for a long time, just sat there under the child's angry glare while he tried to come up with a logical answer to Q's question, to all of Q's reasoning. The truth of the matter was, there really wasn't one. It all really came down to the fact that no one had known Q when Bond was hauling him away from that island. No one had known exactly how dire the situation might become if Westford wasn't confirmed dead. It was unnerving when MI6 hadn't recovered the body, and had become more and more worrisome the more James and Alec had learned about Q's past (hence Alec's eventual mission to go hunt everyone down who was even remotely involved with Westford), but boiled right down to the bare bones of the issue, all the wrath was being brought down on 003 because A) it was easy to blame and be angry at a guy who's first interaction with Q was to rough him up a bit, and B) he just happened to be the unlucky git who'd lost Q back into the custody of Westford when the child was at his peak of being worshipped by just about everyone in MI6. They were _attached_ then, everyone but old-Q at the time, and in their worry, they needed someone to blame, someone to lynch, forgetting that the unflappable and temperamental Gregory Hind had also somehow fallen under the child's spell of likability; but it wasn't just that. The blame being placed really was, as Q pointed out, over the simple fact that 003 survived, causing them all to turn on him like a pack sensing out a weak link among them. It was as if his very survival had turned him into a traitor, that the simple act of _living_ meant he hadn't tried hard enough to keep their pup safe. Except the damnable thing about it was that he _shouldn't_ have lived. The man had more holes in him than what should've been humanly possible for him to survive, and Alec was positive that it was only his sheer stubborn nature that had kept him from slipping away from them. For all intents and purposes, that man _had_ died trying to keep Q safe, but because he'd dared wake up from the ordeal, he became the martyr instead of a would-be hero. And the worst of it was, the man believed that of himself, as well, possibly more than anyone else actually did. It was just the way an agent's mind worked. They didn't handle failure well.

Lost in his thoughts for so long, Alec started again as Q snuggled up back beside him, the fight seemingly gone from the boy's small body.

"Someone needs to tell you guys more often when you're doing a good job," Q said idly. "When people only tell you when you've messed up, you start to believe you can't do anything good."

" _Right_ ," Alec meekly corrected, then tilted his head. "Not that I'm an English major, but I think the phrase is 'anything right.'"

"No, I meant _good_ ," Q shook his head. "You aren't just killing machines, you know. You do good for a lot of people, and I don't think enough of them tell you that. If they did, then I wouldn't have been watching 003 hurting himself to try to prove his worth to the rest of you. And only having his dog to comfort him for it. It's sad. I think it's horribly sad."

Alec stared down at his young companion for a second before wrapping his big arms around him tightly. "Yeah, it is," he admitted quietly with a forlorn quality in his tone, thanking all the gods and cursing them at the same time for bringing this dauntingly intelligent child into their lives. He came in and shook their snowglobe up so thoroughly that things would never settle back into the ways they used to be.

Alec could not have been more grateful for that.

~~~~~~~~~

"James," 003 mewled in relief as the man stepped into what had essentially become a playpen of Hind's room in Medical.

The tone and the use of his first name off 003's lips was what stopped Bond moreso than the sight before him did. Had Gregory Hind ever sounded so pathetically whiney in his entire life? James didn't think so, but now the man was practically begging, something that 003 most definitely did _not_ do.

" _Please_ take them. Or shoot me. Whichever's easier."

Bond looked down at Alec and Q, both of whom were innocently sitting on either side of Gregory's bed playing Skosh right across his lap. On the floor of the room were enough toys to keep Glock joyfully entertained for at least a year, a ball laying abandoned under a small basketball hoop now stuck to the wall, a video game console mounted beside it so it could hook easily to the television (the remotes to which resting on Gregory's bedside table), and an array of various technical bits lying about that Q was undoubtedly tinkering with, among other loose oddities that generally kept children occupied. That might have been all good and well were it not for the fact that Q was not a normal child and thus didn't find as much amusement in said things...meaning Alec was more likely the culprit behind a lot of what Bond was seeing. Alec was a five-year-old in a man's body; a deadly one, sure, but still five when he was feeling playful.

Gregory, for his part, had probably killed his inner child when he was too young to even _have_ an inner child. Bond imagined how all of this inexplicable doting care had played out, with 003 being wary and confused as he tried to figure out what the two were up to, then angry when he realized they were essentially moving into his space with all their chaos, then murderous but unable to do anything about it given his physical state at the moment and lack of access to any weaponry, then passive with glum acceptance in hopes that they would eventually get bored and leave him alone, to now this – begging for an execution just to be away from the well-meaning idiots who had so thoroughly invaded his entire life.

Maybe it wasn't well-being. Maybe this was some form of twisted revenge being played out on Alec's part and had tricked Q into following along.

"What-?" Bond started to ask, but Alec cut him off.

"Q, here, felt bad for old Gregory being penned up all by himself with Saul being gone and all," the man shrugged with a smile. "Figured since he got hurt trying to protect him, we'd keep him company."

" _Bond_ ," Hind drew out again, almost at a whisper with its sheer desperation. His eyes flicked wildly back and forth between everyone in the room, a man at the end of his rope if 007 had ever seen one.

Q, for his part, laid down his cards with such calm that Alec almost didn't notice that he'd just been royally crucified at his own game. Then, with 006 left with his jaw falling open behind him, the boy slid off his chair and padded over to Bond with a pensive look on his face. James was expecting a hug or maybe even a scolding for not calling in during his mission as much as he'd wanted to do to check on Q. Instead, what he got was the child reaching for his hand, and folding it into his in what was his best effort at a firm handshake. In a very serious, professional tone, the child looked right up into Bond's eyes and said, "Well done on your mission, 007."

"But..." James started, glancing up at Alec, who only smirked lightly in return, "you don't even know how my mission went, Q."

The boy shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It will never matter. You're back, you're safe, and to that I say again, well done."

Alec took pity on his friend then, standing up and walking towards James to give him a pat on the shoulder. "I'll explain on the way home," he grinned.

Behind them, Gregory breathed out a soft, "Oh, thank god," to which Alec couldn't help but to tell him not to worry, they'd be back to entertain him again tomorrow. "Please don't," Hind begged again.

With a laugh, Alec merely steered Bond and Q out of the room, surprising James again by smoothly hefting Q up and settling him up on top of his shoulders. The boy had to duck his head so he wouldn't hit it on the ceiling, but he otherwise wrapped his fingers under Alec's chin and seemed content with his new perch. It was far less humiliating than being carried around like a baby, after all.

Seeing nothing but confusion on Bond's face, this time it was Q's turn to smirk as he reached over and patted his favorite caretaker on the head, finally tall enough to return the placating gesture so often bestowed upon him. "It's okay, James, we were helping. I promise. Nothing bad.

James arched a skeptical eyebrow up at him. "003. Was saying please. He _never_ says please. He's sat through physical torture for days on end without uttering that word."

"That's because secretly he likes us," Q whispered in reply as if this was the most logical conclusion in the world.

James remained skeptical, but behind them, finally alone to enjoy some peace in his bed, Gregory studied the Skosh cards still draped across his lap. "Good move, kid," he muttered, and damned if there wasn't a soft smile playing at his previously hardened lips. "Good move."

~The End~


End file.
